


Hollow

by wintercealde



Category: Robin Hood (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-17
Updated: 2008-08-17
Packaged: 2017-10-26 00:13:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintercealde/pseuds/wintercealde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marian fills her world with Robin, but he only leaves her hollow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hollow

**Author's Note:**

> "The victory at Acre was also marred by Richard's savage retribution . . . Richard gave the order for the mass beheading of between 2,700 and 3,000 Turkish men, women, and children. It was an atrocity that is remembered with horror to this day in the Middle East, and for centuries afterwards Turkish mothers would discipline their children with threats of 'Malik Ric' (Evil Richard)".  
> \--Alison Weir, Eleanor of Aquitaine, p. 208.

  
"Malik Ric" is a name that is whispered in the dark. "Malik Ric" is a name used to frighten children, but it frightens adults no less. It is a name for whispers and shadows, a formless horror that lurks just beneath consciousness, that haunts you though you do not realize it.

You know only that Robin cries out in the night; that his eyes grow dark when he has sat too long alone. You know only Much's vague, halting tale of the horrors of war, and you stop him before he can speak too much, before he can tell you things you will not be able to bear the knowledge of. You wish you could let him unburden his heart, but there are limits to what one person can carry for another.

*

"Marian," Robin says to you one evening, voice raw, and maybe it's something in the heady smell of woodsmoke or the way the moonlight slips through the leaves of the trees, but soon you find yourself far away from the camp, back against a fallen tree, entangled in Robin's limbs and too far gone to stop.

You had never realized just how guarded he was around you. It hurt, that it had taken him so long to declare his love, but now it is almost embarrassingly apparent. His eyes are worshipful, dark and colorless in the night, and the way he gasps and sighs as your skin is exposed is almost sacrilegious. But you cannot deny you like it, you cannot deny the feeling of power it gives you, and you let him bury his face in your breasts, you let his hands wander where they will.

Your breath comes quicker—is this really going to happen?—and your skin responds to his hands with blooming warmth. You're not quite sure what to do with your own hands, but he doesn't seem to mind too much.

And then it is all you can do to concentrate on the heat, the solidity of his body as pain knifes through your core. His eyes meet yours reassuringly—he whispers in your ear how much he loves you, how wonderful this is—and he brings you through the pain to the other side, where there is something in the distance you want to reach, though you're not quite sure what it is or how to get there.

His skin burns under your hands now, and he leans back, drawing your leg around his waist and you try to meet him halfway. But his eyes are closed and though his hands are in your hair you're not sure he's really there any more.

You watch as emotion, as reaction to sensation flicker across his face and, as he bucks up, you realize that he does not mean to find you, that he has come to lose himself.

And then he is curling around you, whispering prayers or swears or both, and lets out a gasp and a groan and you hold him close until he returns. Later, when your eyes are closed and he's tracing the contours of your face, he apologizes sheepishly. You tell him there's nothing to apologize for.

It becomes a pattern. When his smile begins to get a little too wild, when he's too quiet at dinner, he comes to you, and you receive him. You're glad that he loves you enough to trust that vulnerable part of himself with you. You want to give him that release that he so clearly needs, and for awhile you give it gladly.

But you come to wonder whether he is really opening himself to you, or if it is a way for him to keep parts of himself shut away, locked up. That distant place comes no closer, and you are left with a feeling of indistinct, undirected longing that never quite goes away, no matter how much he caresses you or smiles or apologizes. It just becomes harder to return his grateful smile.

Now he does not hesitate to let his hand linger on your neck or on your knee, but it does not mean you are closer. It does not mean your love is deeper, that your relationship is more certain. It certainly does not mean that you are happier.

For, you come to realize, even as he fills you, he leaves you hollow.

  



End file.
